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Introduction

Haile Gebrselassie from Ethiopia is one of the greatest marathon runners of all time. He set the current world record of 2 hours 3 minutes and 59 seconds at the 2008 Berlin Marathon. Recently he announced his retirement, after dropping out of the 2010 New York Marathon with an injury. He later reversed his decision following a letter from Brendan Foster.

“My announcement in New York was my first reaction after a disappointing race. When my knee is better again I will start focusing on my next race.”

His decision reversal could mean we will see him run on the streets of London at the 2012 Olympic Games!

As a sports engineer I have to ask the following questions;

1) Could Haile or anybody else run the marathon in under 2 hours at the 2012 Olympics?

2) Is it physically possible to run a marathon under 2 hours?

In this blog article I am going to explore these questions using historic performance statistics. Read the rest of this entry »

Introduction

Usain Bolt is currently the fastest sprinter in the world. His two world records in last year’s athletics world championships were astonishing even for his standards, but what next? Bolt has often talked about reverting to competing in his original event of the 400 metres, and has already competed in a 400 metre race this year. If he focuses his training sufficiently, he may be able to top Michael Johnson’s 400 metre world record (43.18 seconds), which has stood for 11 years. Bolt has also told his coach that he would love to try his hand at the long jump and thinks that he would be very good at it. Is this likely? Could Bolt be any good at the long jump, and will we see any new world records?

Read the rest of this entry »

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